


You Always Had A Choice

by harmonicanoise



Category: Dexter (TV)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Blood and Violence, Gen, I know the show ended years ago but, I'm still not over it, Less than 1000 words, Major Character(s), Memories, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:27:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23929903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harmonicanoise/pseuds/harmonicanoise
Summary: Dexter wakes up from a very long dream. Everyone's there, watching him.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 26





	You Always Had A Choice

**Author's Note:**

> Based off of the finale that Clyde Phillips planned for the series. Hope you enjoy!

My eyes open.

I am staring up at blank concrete. Beneath me I feel something hard and solid, strangely cool as if it were metal…

I suck in a breath of air, as if I’ve never tasted it before. It’s clogged with the smell of dust and sweat; it floats around me in a haze. My eyes blink, and water.

A small part of me says,  _ You’re home. _

Was it all a dream? Was it all some nightmare from the supremely fucked-up head of Dexter Morgan? The last thing I remember is, well, everything… Rudy, the Code, Deborah… It still hurts to think of her, of her body so cold and limp in my hands, covered in white faceless sheets. I remember hurting one killer after another after another in an endless bloody cycle, blood on my hands on my face, feeling such pain and glory and the Miami sun at my back. Feeling nothing but rubber gloves and plastic sheets.

Rita, bleeding in a bathtub. Rudy, bleeding red on his own killing table. My knife ripping through solid flesh, my needle pushing gently into veins and necks stretched taut with fear. That was my Code, I remember, and my sacrifice.

Understanding returns, slowly, painfully: These are memories. These are dreams. These are the remnants of my dark, twisted fantasy, though I know they are real I know I have only experienced them in a flash of seconds. I can’t move, I’m paralyzed, and my back aches from whatever cool solid thing is behind me. 

It was all a dream. All of it.

\-------------

Light appears above me. For an instant, I think it must be the haze of Miami sun pouring through my apartment window, but the light is fluorescent and sterile. It makes the clamps on my wrist shine with an unnatural glaze. Yes. I remember.

Tonight’s the night.

They have placed me in front of a window covered with black curtains. They hang like limp shoulders worn ancient by time. A man in uniform steps into view; he pulls them back gently, almost hesitantly.

In front of me sits rows and rows of seats, and in each one of them is a ghost.

Their faces are all the same; pale, their eyes cold and knowing. They recognize who I am. They should; I killed them.

In the front row, Rita sits with a blank, impassive stare. Her wrists are unmarked. She’s wearing a simple dress, floral print, as if she’s just come in from tending to the lemon tree in the garden. She still wears the ring that I gave her, but none of the scars.

Then, behind her: LaGuerta, Doakes, my sister. I never killed them, I never pulled the trigger, but their deaths were mine all the same. They had all been good people. They were all dead because of me. And now when they look at me they  _ know, _ and though they don’t smile I can feel the anticipation rolling off of them, anticipation for my fate.

The other dozens of bodies are killers like me; they understand, and yet they show no pity. Men and women, young and old, sitting perfectly still and waiting for something.

My eyes skim the back row. Rudy sits next to my mother. His throat is smooth, unblemished flesh. I cut that throat with a knife; I did,  _ I _ did,  _ I did all of this. _

I know that I am sitting in the executioner’s seat; I know that what all of those blank eyes are saying is  _ we’ll see you at the other side. _ Whatever darkness exists there, they’re waiting for it. And somehow, they know.

The officer moves into view again. My throat closes in a solid lump.

It’s Harry.

_ Son,  _ he says, and he looks just as blank as the other bodies stacked in tiered seats in front of me.  _ I’m sorry I never gave you a choice. _

Tears spill down my face. I can’t wipe them away; my hands are bound, those hands with such blood beneath the skin.

_ I’m sorry. _

Deborah looks right through him. Her hands sit in her lap, limp and dead. She says nothing.

I speak to the room and echo the words of my father, as I always have: “I’m sorry.” For perhaps the first time, I mean it.

They study me codly. They are silent.

All that I remembered, all of my life, all played through my head in a matter of seconds, and I feel I need more, but time is running short, it’s slipping away through my fingers…

Once, a long time ago, Harry took me to see an execution. I watched the man go calmly to his seat; he jittered and died, then slumped over like a broken-down machine. Harry’s message was clear:  _ This is what happens if you don’t follow the Code. _

Rule Number One: Don’t get caught.

_ I’m sorry I never gave you a choice. _

I make him say it again. Harry, that constant voice in my thoughts, whispering little words of murder. He’s gone; as I look forward, I see him sit down next to the others. Another body, another name. 

A bag is placed over my head. Desperately, my mind thinks of that little boy in the storage container, screaming, screaming. Electric shocks burn fire into my body, and I feel them like I feel the chainsaws ripping into my mother’s body, like the knives I’ve plunged into so many throats.

Though I can’t see them anymore, I can hear the ghosts in my head:

_ I’m sorry. _

I can see them, bloodied chunks of flesh ripped apart by hacksaw--

_ You always had a choice. _

I could never pretend otherwise, I knew that now. The Code was my choice, my burden, and I never stopped to  _ think _ \--

And all is blackness.


End file.
